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Spotless Days

The sun has had almost no sunspots for almost two weeks (as of Feb. 1, 2018). The video shows a rotating sun in filtered light for the past week, but it is even hard to tell the sun is rotating since there are just about no features. Even the small spot that appears on the 31st is hard to see. This spotless period is a prelude to the approaching period of solar minimum next year, when the sun's activity will be at the low end of its 11-year cycle. Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA.